Eschatologies 2019/2020

Eschatology is a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind, or the ultimate destiny of humankind. The plural version of the word is used in the title to give a sense of a continuing and multiple narrative. The expanding anxieties of the present encouraged by an incessant media relaying images of enormous fires consuming forests, floods, voracious swarms of locusts, all of which equate with the Biblical narratives of war, famine, pestilence, fire and flood. It has almost been as if humanity, with its’ ever increasing levels of anxiety somehow sensed the impending pandemic. This body of work re contextualizes past illustrations of history with present day imagery, bringing the sense that history is a cyclical phenomenon. For example there are the parallels between the present day and the Weimar period in Germany, The Spanish flue epidemic of 1918 and the repeated financial crashes each century typically due to fraud and speculation. Civilization and humanity continuously evolves but still has to contend with the same unseen and underlying forces of nature.